


Hold On I Still Need You

by Lupo (LupoLight)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drowning, Heavy Angst, Hurt Gavin Reed, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not Beta Read, Past Character Death, Songfic, Suicide Attempt, Unofficial Sequel, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LupoLight/pseuds/Lupo
Summary: Songfic based off of 'Hold On I Still Want You' by Chord Overstreet.----When Nines comes back online, he's eager to start living again.He doesn't realize the hole his absence left though, or how deeply the person closest to him fell into it.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 8
Kudos: 77





	Hold On I Still Need You

**Author's Note:**

> Is this a sequel to "Better Place", or completely separate? Honestly, up to you. I've always tossed around the idea of writing a follow up to that, and this song was just too perfect to /not/ use for it.
> 
> I will have happier content up soon don't worry! Just had to get this out of my system.

> _ Loving and fighting _
> 
> _ Accusing, denying _
> 
> _ I can't imagine a world with you gone _

It was never this quiet in their home. He couldn’t unlock the door fast enough, thirium pump thrumming, quicker and quicker with every painful second.  _ ‘Gut instinct’ _ , Hank would’ve called it, made him panic, made him  _ desperate _ to open the door.

The last time he saw Gavin they were both broken, fighting someone else and fighting time to say a few final words. But he got a second chance, a miraculous second chance after all this time, and he wanted every second of it spent with the scarred, funny, confident, determined  _ asshole _ he came to love.

Richard  _ ‘Nines’ _ Reed wanted to be with Gavin, but this stupid door- it finally gave to an equally still silence.

>   
>  _ The joy and the chaos, the demons we're made of _
> 
> _ I'd be so lost if you left me alone... _

He knew Gavin wouldn’t be in a good shape. He was dead- everyone thought he was dead. Too much damage, no one who could fix him. But he wasn’t. Kamski himself saw to his repairs, even if it took time to do them, even if there was no reason. Kamski made sure he came back, maybe a few memories gone, but still himself.

Still incredibly and deeply in love with Gavin, and his bad habits and his better ones. Still devoted to the man he would’ve married if the laws had caught up, to the man that held a copy of his LED on his ring finger, the man that held him so long ago.

Yet he wasn’t right there, and the silence was deafening. He saw the dust on various surfaces, the throw blanket across the couch, the empty bottle of champagne on the table. “Gavin?”

He shut the door behind him when he heard a wail, moving immediately to the hallway. Smiling at seeing Doa, he expected the cat to look up, purr, maybe make that weird hiccuped meow Gavin assured him was just her getting excited. She looked up, and Nines could see stress in the cat, pushing against the bathroom door. “It’s alright,” he assured, trying the handle only to find it locked. 

  
  


> _ You locked yourself in the bathroom; _
> 
> _ Lying on the floor when I break through _

That was odd. Nines never knew Gavin to lock the door, and he never knew Doa, normally cheerful, rarely judgemental-  _ never so loud _ \- to wail like she was being hurt herself. Something was so, so off. “Gavin- Gavin I’m home.” His voice warm, his smile fell at the lack of response. He heard a song fading out from inside the bathroom, and the sound of water hitting the tile.

Something was  _ wrong _ . He pulled out a claw, unlocking the door forcibly, and when he threw it open his world slowed to a stop.

He didn’t need to breathe, he didn’t need to force muscles to keep himself up, he didn’t need oxygen to his brain. And yet, his wires frazzled, errors filling his vision as every detail hit him at once, blurring and obscuring the reality around him.

Only for a moment- nothing else mattered as he rushed forward, pulling the limp body from the water. If he wasn’t so advanced, he’d almost believe this wasn’t Gavin. Frail, thin, and broken, his skin pale like he’d stopped going outside anymore. Hair and stubble unkempt and face aged with stress and sleep deprivation. The only familiarity was the jagged scar across his nose.

  
  


> _ I pull you in to feel your heartbeat _
> 
> _ Can you hear me screaming- _

Gavin wasn’t breathing. He didn’t know how long he’d been under, his scanners were malfunctioning. The chance of survival was so low, and Nines-  _ Nines was scared again _ . Death had been terrifying, but losing Gavin was so much worse. He felt like his insides had frozen over and fried, and as he started CPR, he could feel a dampness to his face.

He wasn’t ashamed to cry, but it made seeing Gavin so much harder, now blurry. Error after error of biocompent malfunctioning as his stress peaked into the high nineties lined the sides of his vision, but he kept going.  _ “Gavin- please don’t leave me!” _

A memory so familiar of hearing that screamed at him. Of a rough voice. He would beg to hear it again, to hear Gavin call him anything- his baby, dipshit, Terminator- whatever. He just wanted to hear him, his voice box glitching as a static-filled whine left him.

  
  


> _ Hold on, I still want you _
> 
> _ Come back, I still need you _
> 
> _ Let me take your hand, I'll make it right _
> 
> _ I swear to love you all my life _
> 
> _ Hold on, I still need you _

Just as Nines saw the chance of survival drop into single digits, Gavin let out a rasping cough. Immediately, his systems pinged a call for an ambulance, internally responding as he helped clear the man’s lungs of water. But then he was gone again, and Nines fought and fought to keep him up.

It was only then that he took the details in around him. An empty bottle of vodka on the counter, his clothes haphazardly discarded on the floor, and then the little red-lit LED ring on the counter. He picked it up, mechanically, and slid it back onto Gavin’s hands as he listened to the wheezing rattle of shallow breaths.

  
  


> _ A long endless highway, you're silent beside me _
> 
> _ Driving a nightmare I can't escape from _
> 
> _ Helplessly praying, the light isn't fading _
> 
> _ Hiding the shock and the chill in my bones _

When the EMTs got there, he had no answers for them. Not even an interface could help, an open book to the one, seeing his own pain reflected on the android’s face. He was helpless, watching Gavin’s limp body, so  _ wrong _ looking and so much older than just a few months.

Gavin looked like he aged a lifetime without him, and the ache in his chest was worse than being shot. He followed them, eventually having to pull away and get in Gavin’s car.

Even this had signs- signs others should have noticed. Did no one pay attention? His anger was quick, irrational, as he followed the ambulance and ignored the mess of coffee cups and discarded meals. Gavin’s car was never this dirty, and the mission to clean it was layered under countless missions to ensure Gavin’s safety.

It felt like ages, in the silent car, absent of a brash voice chattering, but eventually he pulled into the hospital’s ER parking lot.

  
  


> _ They took you away on a table _
> 
> _ I pace back and forth as you lay still _

Watching his lover’s lifeless body enter the double doors on a gurney made his gyroscope malfunction horridly, the world spinning uncomfortably. He thought of calling Connor, but he wouldn’t be able to handle any happy reunion when part of him was dying all over again. Uneasy, something so  _ weak _ making someone so strong stumble, it was like his systems were rioting at even the thought of this being it.

He wasn’t allowed back at first, so he paced, swaying so often, not stopping even when another android approached him to calm him down. He saw the ninety-six in the top of his vision, his stress beyond dangerous, but he couldn’t care. There was the unknown factor of Gavin’s life.

Eventually, someone took pity, bringing him back, and the minute his eyes landed on Gavin again he sagged. He looked like death itself, a shadow of his former self, now in a hospital gown and oxygen over his face. Monitors beeped, reminding Nines he was  _ alive. _ He was alive, and Nines sat in a chair, something untwisting in his chest as the close call passed.

  
  


> _ They pull you in to feel your heartbeat... _
> 
> _ Can you hear me screaming- _

Until it hadn’t. Until Gavin, still asleep, sputtered out a violent wet cough, his vitals spiking. Nurses came in, and Nines processed every word.  _ “Clear his throat.” “Secondary drowning possibility- someone get a chest x-ray.” “Oxygen levels are low, someone get him cleared already!” _

He was asked to step outside, but he couldn’t step away. His scanners weren’t that medically advanced- all he could see,  _ hear _ , was Gavin struggling to breathe. And for the briefest moment, grey eyes opened, locking onto his own. “Please don’t… Please don’t leave me,” he repeated, his voice box still a glitching mess of static as he begged near silently.

Then they closed and Nines was pushed out of the room, allowing the others to work.

  
  


> _ Hold on, I still want you _
> 
> _ Come back, I still need you _
> 
> _ Let me take your hand, I'll make it right _
> 
> _ I swear to love you all my life _
> 
> _ Hold on, I still need you _

He thought of everything, in those few minutes he was left to only listen. He thought of meeting the detective, going from hostile, begrudging partners, to competitive friends, to actual friends and closer, and closer, becoming lovers, and then even a legal step away from being  _ married _ . 

Moving in and complaining about the lack of books. The study becoming a library as well. Nights reading to a nearly passed out human and days watching the same man stretch in the living room. Fostering Princess, Bastard going to Chris’s house, Doa laying on his lap.

He wanted that- no- he  _ needed _ all that again. He needed mornings of pressing a coffee into Gavin’s hands and getting a kiss in return. He needed to come home from work and get dragged into a shower, playful hands never turning him away. He needed his strong  _ boyfriend _ there with him- he needed  _ Gavin _ .

Nines could understand why he found him like this, after dying and leaving Gavin in the same way Gavin was leaving him. But it was killing him.

  
  


> _ I don't wanna let go _
> 
> _ I know I'm not that strong _
> 
> _ I just wanna hear you _
> 
> _ Saying, "Baby, let's go home." _
> 
> _ "Let's go home" _
> 
> _ Yeah, I just wanna take you home _

The nurses slowly cleared out, going past a numb android, his stress at ninety-nine. The irony was lost on him, just waiting for the doctor to come out. To tell him he was too late, that he couldn’t save the one person who mattered the most. His life wouldn’t end- Gavin would never forgive him, and he couldn’t hurt everyone else twice. He couldn’t add his body to Gavin’s, even if his  _ soul _ begged for that.

To think he activated thinking he was nothing but a soulless machine.

“Mr. Reed?” 

The name choked him, and he blinked, fully aware of why his vision was blurry now, what obscured it. “I still need him,” he answered instead, no sob, no stuttered breath, just a hollow echo in his voice.

The doctor smiled, and stepped aside. “Come in.” Over the sound of beeping, and machines, and patients and doctors and nurses, he could focus on Gavin’s heartbeat. Steady. Alive.  _ Alive _ , and he met grey eyes. Dull looking until they met his own icy blue, and then they went wide, disbelief shining in them but hope as well.

> _ Hold on, I still want you _
> 
> _ Come back, I still need you _

“Nines?”


End file.
